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Meet the Team: A Conversation with MicroStrategy’s Kimberly Bishop

We recently chatted with Kimberly Bishop, Vice President, Worldwide Customer Success Management, about her experience shifting from being a MicroStrategy customer to an employee, and what she enjoys most about working in Customer Success. The following is an abridged version of that conversation.

How long have you been with MicroStrategy?

I joined MicroStrategy in November of 2015.

Why did you go into customer success?

The Customer Success group is positioned somewhere between sales and support and, as such, is positioned to have a very unique relationship with our customers - playing the role of their advocate internally. This is a big reason why I was drawn to this team.

The Customer Success group has quarterly conversations with customers – which we call “health-checks” – where we reach out to customers to discuss how they’re using our products, understand the challenges they’re facing and gauge their overall satisfaction with the support they receive and with MicroStrategy as a vendor. Our priority is to make them successful and increase their utilization of MicroStrategy. Our goal is to ensure they continue to see the value in their MicroStrategy investment. We also connect with customers during their annual renewal which can give us further insight into opportunities to expand their product portfolio or support model.

What attracted you to MicroStrategy?

Prior to joining MicroStrategy, I ran a customer-facing data services team at a small startup called GridPoint. We were an analytics group that would take energy consumption data and share it with customers to help them use energy more efficiently. In doing so, we had a great deal of data that we needed to sort through. We implemented MicroStrategy to streamline data analysis and reporting, which turned the corner for our data services team, helped us productize our service offering and positioned the team to provide even more value to our customers.

From the initial vendor selection through implementation and service expansion, I developed a great deal of respect for the product itself and recognized the company as a leader in the BI space. When the opportunity came to join the company, I jumped at the chance because I knew it was a product and company positioned for the long game.

What lessons from your background and/or career do you put into your team’s daily operations?

I’ve been on the user side a great deal – having run my own BI group at NeuStar, and having been a MicroStrategy customer myself. Specially, my time as a MicroStrategy customer allowed me to develop a good grasp of what customers experience with the platform and the sense of urgency they have to address issues as soon as they arise. People live and die by the availability and accuracy of their data. Understanding that has made a big and positive impact on the way I work with MicroStrategy customers.

How does MicroStrategy Customer Success use MicroStrategy?

All of our KPIs and reporting are stored in our internal Aqueduct system, which is an internal MicroStrategy implementation. Whether we’re progressing towards quarterly goals, securing maintenance renewals, or inputting information from our health checks, anyone can access this data as MicroStrategy dashboards. As an example, executives and sales or services professionals can easily pull up the Customer Success dashboard and see exactly what each customer reported in their latest health checks.

What’s the best thing about your work?

The best thing about the work is that we’re all focused on building a team that embodies our values. We are very focused on continuous improvement and being as agile as possible. We move really fast to respond to gaps in process or skills that prevent us from serving our customers in a timely fashion. If changes are successful, we keep them. If not, we scratch them and start fresh. We have a built-in resilience that leads to a very productive, positive and cheerful work environment. You can try new things and people around you are open to doing things differently.

When you’re not providing support to customers, what’s your favorite thing to do outside of work?

I am a wife and mother of two beautiful daughters, ages eight and eleven. My absolute favorite thing to do outside of work is spend time with them - whether roasting marshmallows in the backyard, spending family time at the beach in the summer or enjoying hikes around the Washington, D.C. metro area. We have a lot of fun.

Jean-Francois is an engineer with a background in business analytics. He was a Project Coordinator for Goldfields Money Limited, leading IT implementation within the financial services industry. Jean-Francois also has experience as a consultant for EOH, an IT solutions firm in South Africa. He has expertise in SAP, is a MicroStrategy Certified Designer, and is certified in Information Technical Infrastructure Library (ITIL). In addition to pursuing technology certifications, Jean-Francois is a licensed commercial pilot with a twin-engine rating and still flies in his spare time